Many personal electronic devices come equipped with, or otherwise utilize, digital cameras that may be used to capture images or videos, which in turn may be used in videoconferencing applications or the like. Typically, it is desirable to maintain the brightness of the captured video frames within a predetermined range to help prevent the video frames from being underexposed or overexposed. To that end, some digital cameras may utilize an auto exposure system (also referred herein as an “AE system”), which may be configured to modify one or more system settings to control the exposure of the captured images. For example, the AE system may utilize one or more algorithms to evaluate the brightness of some or all of the scene being captured and modifying one or more hardware settings (e.g., exposure time, aperture size, gain) and/or image processing techniques to maintain the brightness of captured images (or one or more portions thereof) within a predetermined range.
AE systems may have limits on the range of the exposure adjustments they can make, and thus may not always be able to capture images within the predetermined range, such as during low-light conditions when the surrounding environment may provide little or no light to the scene being captured. This may be problematic when capturing video using a mobile device, as the lighting conditions may change drastically as a user moves between different lighting conditions, and especially so when the camera does not have an associated flash element to help illuminate the screen. Thus, there is a need for systems, methods, and computer-readable media to provide for well-lit images, even under low-light conditions.